Diversifying your Clinical Experience, Knowledge and Skill to Help to Improve Interdisciplinary C...

Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast, brought to you by The Nurse Speak, a show where we rally some of our nation's greatest nurse leaders, educators, experts, and advocates to tackle some of the greatest challenges that the nursing profession faces. My name is Damion Jenkins, and I'm your host for the show. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn that nurses can do anything. All right, Julian, thank you so much for being on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast. Why don't you take a moment to introduce yourself to the listeners? Let them know a little bit about who you are, where you started in nursing, and where you are today.

Okay, so my name is Julian Moreno. Um, I have a master's in nursing, but I started off as an, uh, Army medic. Um, and then when I came back to the civilian world, um, I transitioned into becoming an EMT, uh, and then wanted to pursue nursing from that point forward. Um, so I started off as a CNA and then LPN and RN. And moved up the ranks, uh, so to speak, um, you know, associate degree and whatnot. And, uh, and I wanted to continue on, uh, to be able to give back to my, uh, to, to the nursing community.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. So, all right, you just kind of went through the entire progression of, you know, direct care workers essentially, right? So you started off in the military as a medic Right?

Yes.

Then you came out and you did EMT, correct? Then from there, CNA, then nursing school, started with an associate's degree, and then worked your way through. And now you have a master's degree in nursing.

I do.

Amazing.

I want to continue on for my, my DNP too. So I'm kind of shopping around for it. For school.

Get it. And you should get your DNP, your DNP, your PhD, whatever the trajectory you want to go on. That is amazing. So how many years from start as a medic to now?

Well, I'd say a little bit over 20 years. You know, it hasn't been without, you know, bumps and roadblocks in a way, but definitely called life, right?

Yes. Yeah. Amazing. So, you know, over 20 years since you started to provide care services for individuals, right? And, you know, you know by now, and many of our listeners know as well, providing care is a spectrum. It happens at all different levels, but it has a fundamental component to it that it all starts with truly valuing other people, right? Valuing human life, valuing the connections and communities that we have around us and being of service, right? That's truly what it's about. It's, it's utilizing our skillset and our knowledge to help people. And oftentimes when it's direct care, like you've done for much of your career, it is helping people at their worst, right, when they really need that support. And that's so noble of you to dedicate so much of your life, um, to that. And I applaud you and thank you for your service. All right, thank you. So the whole premise of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast is to have folks like yourself who has a world of experience and knowledge and wisdom to share that knowledge and wisdom with the audience, the listeners, and give them some tangible tasks or skills that they can implement into their own practice to achieve whatever success looks like for them. Right. So you have, I'm sure, lots to share, but I want to help you kind of focus and narrow it down a little bit. Let's focus on the greatest challenge, right, that you have seen that has been a consistent theme throughout your healthcare career? It doesn't just have to be in nursing because I know a lot of it is relatable and there's crossover and, you know, transferable, but this is specifically for nurses. So what was the biggest challenge that you had to address throughout your career that you have then developed some form of strategy to overcome that has found yourself success and maybe success for other people as well?

I think that adaptability of, you know, of you being in a scenario or a care scenario where you're not familiar, you know what I'm saying? So I always was moving up and moving around and whatnot. You know, find yourself a mentor, find yourself somebody that will help guide you through, you know, through the, uh, what it is, the tasks that you need to learn, uh, build on the fundamentals that you have, um, um, throughout nursing school. Um, you know, and even if you can't, like, I, I found myself having mentors that were willing to teach me, but also those that I watch from afar as well. So it's like you don't have to necessarily be— have that kind of relationship. Um, if someone is not willing to teach you, you could learn by observing them. You know, some of the strategies that I formed, I guess, before you get into those strategies, it's okay.

Let me just kind of recap what you're saying for the listeners in case they're not following. I think what you're saying here is that as you're transitioning throughout your career, you're going to be faced with particular challenges that maybe the organization, institution, or colleagues that you're working alongside may not be providing you with the simple how to navigate those complexities. And this might require additional mentorship and support outside of the organization or institution or colleagues that you're working with. Is that what you're saying? That was one of the biggest challenges for you, that you needed that additional support as you navigated through your career?

Um, well, I'd say, I mean, I was fairly good at finding out what I needed to find out and building upon my whatever base I had.

Right.

But you know, you don't know all the ropes when you're out there. So, you know, organizational-wise and how to move around and maneuver and find the resources that you need, you don't necessarily know that. So then that's where I'd kind of attach myself to someone or watch watch them from afar and take, you know, take notes about like where, where, where it is that we need whatever we need for the patient, you know, for, for the best outcome for the patient.

Yeah, right. So yeah, so I mean, I don't think the summary is far off. There's always situations as we're going through our career that we are overwhelmed with new information, we're overwhelmed with stepping into a new role that we're not so familiar with yet. We may have had a crash course and how to figure it out, but it's not as thorough or as consistent as we have maybe needed. And so again, we find ourselves kind of wishing that we had someone we can lean on who has the expertise, who has the knowledge, who's been through it before, that can help us along the way. And I shared this in previous episodes, and I'm going to continue to share it because it is a common thread through healthcare in general, but there's just a not— there's not enough emphasis or dedication or resources with education throughout all phases of the healthcare system. There's lots of the education in the beginning phases, right? When you're in school, you're in the skills lab, you're on the clinical site doing your, your rotations, your case studies, all of that stuff. But once you get out after that, you pass the licensing exam, you become a licensed professional, you're now in the workspace. Some organizations do better than others, certain settings do better than others, but still widely there's not enough support to really give us the level of training and support that we really need to be confident and proficient and able to do things without the self-doubt, right, without the hesitation of knowing what to do in the case of an emergency or some other kind of, um, really a situation that we're not trained to because humans are so variable that not every possible situation could be trained in advance. And we don't always have that mentor nearby, right? We don't have that experienced charge nurse who's ready to swoop in and get our backs. It's not always the case. And with the current climate of healthcare, we have a lot more newbies out there working in the clinical space without the seasoned veterans to really come in and be that oversight to say, wait a minute, this isn't how it should be done. And it creates a, a tension with skill mix and confidence and outcomes, and it's a problem everywhere. So Yes, mentorship, having a dedicated coach or having someone who's been through it before that you, like you said, you latched on to, to say, hey, I need help with this. And oftentimes, just to piggyback on the point I was making, oftentimes the systems that exist currently, traditionally widespread, do not offer the level of mentorship, coaching, tutoring, education that we need in the clinical space. I think academics are doing fine, right? Academics largely, that's their whole game, right, is focused around education. So they should be, you know, doing at least enough to get people to pass the exams and do the skills correctly. But beyond that, there's not a whole lot of support out there. I see it for myself. I'm a director of education for a 409-bed nursing facility in Manhattan, New York. I'm the only educator in that building.

Wow.

So there's almost 500 staff members, 300-something nursing staff, and the expectation is that one person handle it all. Now I'm managing, you know, I'm doing the best I can, but I know there's limitations. I see there's limitations because I can't be everywhere at once and I can't support every staff member in the moments that they need to be supported. Right. So finding that support. So now let's get into the strategies. What have you done to kind of gap that strategy or that issue for yourself? First, let's talk about how you managed to move through that. And then how are you using these skills to help others?

Um, pretty much extensive note-taking, a lot of referring back to fundamentals and skills. You know, I have tons of books with me still that I, you know, that I had used going through nursing school. I haven't gotten rid of a lot of them. I know that there's some others that, you know, as soon as they're done, they're all gone or they're sold on eBay or whatnot, but not me. You know, that's definitely one of my strategies. Also, continuing to be in touch with mentors that I've had in the past. You know, they've provided me with all sorts of different insights on things. And, you know, it's been of service to me. I've continued to let them know what's, you know, my— how it is currently in the nursing, you know, what's going on in nursing. I'm not saying that they're out of it, but I'm saying like the older generations—

Let's call it for what it is. Let's call it for what it is. Some of us myself included, have been removed from certain scenarios, certain clinical experiences, certain tasks that we might be a little rusty on, right? And being up to date is essential. And if we're not in the clinical space, in the trenches, if you will, getting that experience, we do need to stay connected to it through colleagues who are still there. At a minimum, I think that's important. So thanks for mentioning that.

Thank you. Um, and then just continuing education too. Uh, I try to do a lot of, uh, different certifications and whatnot, and that, that, that's helped me throughout my career in the different settings that I've been in.

Absolutely. Continuing education, ongoing professional development, putting yourself in situations where you're forced to learn a new skill set or a new perspective is so important. Now, you know, on your initial intake form to be on the show, you wrote the words diversification of nursing, right? And so it sounds like that's a lot of where you found your success, and you've kind of navigated that desire to just learn and grow your skill set and not stay settled for one particular role. Not to say that anything's wrong with the roles that you were in. But you wanted to learn that skill, learn that craft, master that, and then go to the next level. And I think that's really great. So talk a little bit about diversification of nursing. How did it help you? And then how could it help other people, especially those nurses who feel stuck, maybe misguided, sometimes bamboozled? Let's be honest, sometimes we get out there and we're like, wait a minute, this isn't anything like what I thought it was going to be like. You know, how could it help those people, you know, after you share how it helped you?

All right. So I started off on event unit as an LPN, and then I wanted to go off and do long-term care, and I tried all the different, you know, settings. And it definitely helped me because I was I didn't want to get stuck in a rut of continuing on with one way of doing things. Once I got out of that setting, then I went to the long-term care, and then I went to the LTCH and med surg. And I wanted to see how it was in all these different units and how I could learn something, grab a skill that maybe I didn't have before, or apply what I've learned in another setting, obviously tailored to what needs are of the particular setting that you're at. Obviously, you can't— all of them don't translate over, but the basics do. And that's pretty much how I wanted to round out my nursing experience and my career.

So how could you recommend that someone takes that same kind of consideration and diversify their nursing career so they never feel run down, burnt out, mundane, or stuck. Because some of us get into jobs and it might pay well and it might be close to home, or it might have the benefits that we're looking for, um, but sometimes we get, you know, a little restless, or we start getting annoyed at some of the daily routines that just never seem to change, and how could diversifying their experiences, whether changing different settings, going to different places, travel nursing, whatever the case may be, that could really help them with their careers?

I'm thinking in the sense that it helped me, that, you know, getting into that learner role again, going through, you know, the novice to expert, like, better, you know, it helps. And if you continue to view yourself as the learner and the novice, then there's not, you know, there's a wealth of knowledge that's out there for you to gain that, you know, is— okay, don't get bogged down with the daily happenings and, you know what I'm saying, and routine. You know, try to expand yourself with education. And looking at it as, you know, a different educational challenge for yourself, and then you won't get bogged down with the minutia of the day-to-day. That's, that's my advice.

Absolutely. So, you know, diversification of my nursing career is where— how I got to where I am today, truly. I knew early on that I wanted to be an educator. I was inspired by some of the nurse educators that I had when I was in nursing school. I saw a very specific need that my professors were not fulfilling for me or my classmates that I knew I could do a better job at. So I had already started to plan how I was gonna utilize my career, my experiences to change some of the ways things are being done to provide a better service and a better outcome. And then I used that motivation and that drive to help me pivot throughout my career. The, the profession almost lost me in the very beginning. From the realities of being thrown in the trenches, not having enough support, you know, the accusatory and blaming type culture that kind of happens in the clinical setting where you make a mistake and everyone wants to blame you because you're licensed and you should know better and someone should have trained you and da da da da, whatever it is, right? And then just kind of just the fast pace of things, how there's really a lack of thoughtfulness There's a lack of care, timing, and tact. There doesn't seem to be really high levels of emotional intelligence to kind of navigate the complexities of conflict and emotional turmoil. And we're all fighting with each other and like being mean to each other. And I was just like, this is not for me. I came from, you know, 15 years of the food and hospitality industry, which we are focused solely on customer service and treating people kindly and making them happy. And now, aren't we supposed to be doing the same thing as nurses, but yet we're not? And I was very disturbed by all of that. However, I never let all of the negative cloud my judgment and what I wanted to do with what I discovered in nursing school, and I wanted to be an educator. So I used education and then diversifying my experience to keep me on track. So when my first job wasn't working out, I then pivoted and did something different, took a charge nurse role, which was new for me. I was scared, but I did it. I said yes, I took the jump, and it worked out amazingly, and I learned a lot. Then after that, I knew I needed to get acute care experience, because if I didn't get acute care experience, then how could I be an effective educator later, right? So then I went to the hospital. I did tele, I did, you know, ICU. I did all of these, you know, different specialties. And then I decided, you know what, I don't want to have the restriction of only learning policies and procedures for this facility, I want to learn how people do it across other communities, different states, different cities. So I did travel nursing for a while. Then I started teaching for the same college I graduated from as an adjunct professor, and I did that for 7 years while I'm still helping people pass the NCLEX, while I'm still growing new skill sets, building a business, you know, doing all of these things that are always different. From what I was taught, right? I was not taught that nurses do these things. I was taught that a nurse gets a job at a hospital or a nursing home, and then they go up the chain of command in that, that hospital or nursing home, and then that's about it, right? But I could see the future through my scrying glass, and I was like, this is not it for me. Um, and I think most of us would agree that that's not it for us. Nursing is such a diverse profession that it's almost self-limiting if you don't diversify your skill set. It's almost crippling if you don't diversify your skill set and your knowledge and your experiences, because then you become very narrow-minded, very stuck in a certain way, unwilling to learn new perspectives, unwilling to adapt to a variety of different situations, and I've seen some really great potential nurses kind of not really blossom to their full potential because they settled because that's what they were told to do, right? So, you know, would you say to everyone listening that you've gotten to where you are now not only just for your own personal motivations of learning and getting, but do you feel like those pivots were integral to being able to move to the next step.

Oh, absolutely. They're the, they're the pillars of what I built my career on.

Right. And again, you had one perspective when you first started, then you gained a new skill set which brought a whole new perspective. You challenged yourself, which I'm sure for many of us is scary. You have a lot of uncertainty ahead of you, but you just got to take the jump. You just got to say, you know what, I want to see what else is out there for me. If it doesn't work out, I can always come back to where I started. And that's what I try to remind everyone, no matter where you start, if you start off as a medic, if you start off as a CNA, LPN, RN, all the way up to doctorate, CEO of the United States, whatever the case may be, if where you land is not working out for you, you can always go a step back to where you have already mastered a skill set and fall back in your comfort zone until you get to a point to take the next jump. Because that's so important in developing a skill set that is going to help not only you and your family to succeed in whatever life throws your way, but also to be able to leverage your skill set to help others at a much larger impact, right? So now that you're a nurse educator, right, potentially working on your DNP, Do you feel now that you have a much larger impact within the healthcare community than you did when you were a nurse on the floor?

Actually, yes, because I'm still, you know, doing the clinical. I'm on the clinical side and the educational side, and I use what I've learned to communicate with the patient, relate with the patient, with the patient's families, you know, with the collaboration with different healthcare allied healthcare workers and their importance and their, you know, how integral they are to the system. You know, I've— it's definitely been of benefit to me to be able to, you know, bring all that together.

And so I'm going to rephrase that a little bit for you. It's been beneficial to the entire healthcare community and all of the people of your community. Because of now you have a different role to play when you're in education, right? When you're clinical, you are impacting one patient at a time, right? And that patient will take what you've taught them and hopefully manage their, their, their care, get better, and maybe even teach something they've learned to their family members. But when you teach a nurse, That nurse is going to take that knowledge and then teach hundreds of more people over their career, and so on and so forth. So the impact of being in a position of leadership, which even down to an LVN, CNA, you're still a leader at some capacity. But when you get to the point to where you are, your intention is to bestow your knowledge and your skill set onto others so that they can in turn do the same thing. You are amplifying the professional integrity, the safety, the, you know, positive outcomes, all of the things that you set out to do one patient at a time. You're now able to make a much larger reach because you are sharing all of that amazing knowledge and skill with other people who want to do the same thing, right? And that is one of the reasons why, if you like to help people, on a much larger scale, you should eventually make your way to leadership and/or education because it gives you an opportunity to make impact at a much larger level, right?

May I interject?

Yeah, please.

Um, I've already had the opportunity to instill in the most promising of my students, uh, that they should be mentors to others. Now, granted They may not have all the knowledge that we need about competent nurse, but they're learning. But yet the potential is there. And I've told them time and time again, especially the brightest ones, bring the others in the profession, the other student nurses up to the level where you're at so that everybody can benefit from understanding at a greater level. And be involved in better patient outcomes. And also, I try to pick out how these students learn, right? And what their— the skill sets that they've brought to the table, you know, as a nursing student. And then I try to tie it into, you know, like what— okay, for example, I have one that's been— was an engineer, right? So take all that mathematical kind of knowledge and think of the different algorithms algorithms and healthcare and in nursing that, you know, how to apply it that way, or someone who's more artistic leaning, you know, etc., you know, think of like building your, help me out here, the concept mapping or all that kind of stuff. So pretty much, you know, that's how I try to help out, you know, my students.

That's amazing. And, you know, whether they're your students, whether they're your colleagues, whether they're associates, you know, even people that you just might know in passing by. If you see a quality that they have that would benefit others, you should help them elevate that quality, right? And that's what it sounds like you're doing with your students, even at the student level, when they are nervous and insecure and they're not confident in their skill set. You're telling them, hold on, you do have skills that are beneficial for others. Now you don't have to become an experienced, confident nurse years later. You have things now that you can start using, and that's the strengths-based leadership that a lot of our organizations is missing. It's one of those pieces that a mentor and a coach typically can help with that the leadership in healthcare organizations just are not focusing on implementing. They're very focused on numbers. Very focused on the bottom line, very focused on budget, very focused on patient admissions, discharges, the regulatory stuff that needs to be done. But there's no real thought or effort going into elevating individual strengths and positioning people in the positions that they're going to be best at, right? There's still kind of a general consensus that, oh, you have an LVN license or an LPN license, these are your tasks. If you have an RN license, this is what you're gonna do. But did anyone ever consider that one of your registered nurses could actually be the best patient advocate? Did you ever consider that one of the registered nurses could be the best admissions coordinator? Did you ever consider that the registered nurse could be the best sales representative? You wouldn't know that unless you spent time learning your staff's strengths. And so the relationship-based leadership, the strengths-based leadership strategies, those are all things that I'm really big on. I'm pushing it to be a, a national initiative that it is a fundamental requirement for curriculum, not only in school before licensure, but absolutely required for orientations and onboarding for Anyone, because it could be taught in very small, simple-to-digest segments for all the way down to a janitor, and then all the way up to high level for executives, right? We can, we can teach these skills and invest a little bit more time in making sure that this is covered. Less time on the repeat mundane stuff that people get the first time, like OSHA, right? Infection control, HIPAA, right? We all know it. We, we know it. We got it. Good. Yes, it's regulatory. Yes, we have to cover it, but we don't have to spend so much time there. Make it present, but then spend that other time focusing on the things that are more important. And so I'll leave you with this last thought regarding that. A lot of people call these types of skills soft skills, but they're not soft skills. They are essential. They are foundational. They are mandatory.. And any successful leader out there knows that this is more important than numbers, because if you don't have relationships, then you have nothing, because we live in a world where we need people to make things happen. So you have to have good relationships. So it's really worth investing a lot of time and energy in building up the understanding of how we should build relationships in all of our interactions, especially when we're trying to create something bigger than ourselves. Right? So amazing. So diversification of the nursing experience. You mentioned also, you know, collaborating with allied health professionals, which you touched on briefly. I do want to give you a little bit of opportunity to explain a little bit more. What does that mean, especially from the perspective of Nursing. And then I have kind of a little bit of a story to share regarding that, 'cause I have a best friend who is actually a paramedic, and I'll tell you about our dichotomy after you share why is that so important for nurses.

So collaboration is important because you need to be able to speak the language of the other provider. And kind of have even a basic understanding or whatever level understanding that you have of their role is integral in how you're going to refer to them or defer to them for whatever need it is that the patient, you know, whatever the patient need might be. But I've definitely built some of my best relationships with with other allied health providers, with respiratory therapists, having worked on a vent unit and an LTAC and shared care modalities that we have to do and basic understanding of the ventilators, but enough to, I guess, kind of get by as an RN.

Yeah.

But then also on LinkedIn, I've had an opportunity to connect with some paramedics as well, paramedic in particular. He and I, we've had discussions about how, okay, let's say you're in the long-term care setting, kind of like streamlining, getting from the pre-hospital scene to the hospital, make the transfer more seamless, kind of cut out all the fluff and give the SBAR, or talk about exactly what the patient's, what's going on with the patient in the way that a nurse could relate to an EMT or paramedic and kind of give them exactly what they need so that it's less time is wasted and making the patient outcomes improve. It's definitely that way So that's how I've used collaboration and interdisciplinary teams and individuals to kind of grow my own career. But then also, I still, you know, keep in contact with, again, like with some of my mentors, like other, you know, other disciplinary members. And, you know, hey, you know, what's your thought on this and that, whatever the care scenario might be, and kind of move on from there.

Amazing. So, you know, a lot of what you said makes a lot of sense, especially over my years of experience, you know, working in the emergency department or working in a long-term care facility where I do speak to EMS paramedics, fire department, you know, members. They do have a very specific way of, of talking. It's not the way that nurses talk. It's not the way that nurses give report. But again, no one teaches us this stuff. No one teaches how to effectively communicate from one member of the disciplinary team to the other, except for the traditional SBAR communication that we all learn in school and how to give report to other nurses or how to give report to a provider. Now, SBAR communication should be universal and should be used with medics, paramedics, EMTs, trauma, all of these people. But we know it's not, especially when the education is very different. The time that we spend in the education, the type of education we receive, the expectations for return demonstration, role modeling, it's very different in the different levels of training. EMT programs specifically, and I've seen the programs, a lot of them, how they run, they are very skilled-focused. Very skill-focused, very little interprofessional communication, relationships, conflict resolution, none of that stuff, right? They don't spend a whole lot of time about how to build a therapeutic relationship with your patient. Like, that's not their goal. Their goal is to save their life, plug the holes, and get them to where they need to go, right? So, but where the lack of that education really hurts is when they are forced to develop those therapeutic relationships with the other providers that they are now releasing the patient to, or maybe have to share information with. And so sometimes there's a disconnect, right? So, you know, back to my best friend who is a paramedic and has been a paramedic for many years, we have had multiple arguments about what should be done, how it should be done, when it should be done. And it all boils down to no one is teaching us the variances, differences in role, because a paramedic might think they know what a registered nurse does and what they're responsible for, but they don't. Same thing as me as a registered nurse. I cannot confidently say that I fully understand the full, from start to finish, scope of practice of a paramedic. Because it's just different, and it's different for a lot of reasons. I'm not riding in an ambulance in traffic going into people's homes and figuring out what I could do to save their life. I'm not doing that. They usually come to me either through the emergency door after the paramedics have had an opportunity to stabilize them, or they're coming to me straight from family members dropping them off, and I do have to triage and figure that out, but I have a little bit more resources than paramedics do out in the community, right? So it is just a very different training. It's a very different expectation. But again, no one teaches us those things. So this is a great opportunity, Julian. I'm actually gonna make a plug for you. This is an op— an opportunity for you to create content, course curriculum, to teach these variances, to create a communication guide from practitioner to practitioner. How should a nurse speak to a doctor? How should a doctor speak to a nurse? How should a nurse speak to a CNA? How should a CNA speak to a director? How should a paramedic speak to the nurse at the, um, long-term care facility? When you create those easy-to-follow parallels, the communication is going to improve, right? And then also include what are the very specific roles with each you know, position. And that way you build mutual respect for what each member of the team brings to the table, and then you create a better understanding of how everyone can work together, right? Because you said a lot about how the patients, you know, get improved outcomes as a result of this collaboration, which is true, but that's not where a lot of nurses and other healthcare providers are struggling. A lot of us are not struggling out in the healthcare world because we, we're seeing patient outcomes drastically decline. That's always been a concern, right? But the biggest concern is the communication piece. The biggest concern is how are we working together? The biggest concern is why do we feel like we're always being yelled at by people, right? Or always disrespected or always told we're not good enough, we're not, we're not fast enough. We don't know what we're doing. But yet we're some of the most highly trained and certified and regulated professions out of all the others. We have more organizations that govern our practice than any other industry. We're higher than nuclear medicine as far as the regulations that go against our practice.

Wow, that's an eye-opener for me.

It's great. Do the research. It's wild how many professional organizations govern the philosophy, the concepts, all the way down to how we do skills at the bedside more than any other profession in the world. But yet oftentimes we're taken for granted. We're not, you know, treated correctly, whatever, whatever. I believe a lot of that is a lack of thoughtful education. Plus, you know, some of the relationship building, the emotional intelligence, taking time to figure things out instead of just hurrying up and checking things off of a box, right? Spending a little bit more time in the assessment phase of things rather than just jumping and reacting to everything. All of these are going to have major impacts on how we work and collaborate together. But the, the collaboration with allied health professionals is integral. Nurses could not do a good job if we didn't have the allied health professionals doing the that we can't do. So thank you to everyone out in the field— medics, EMTs, paramedics, firefighters, police, whoever's out there delivering the care, even the nurses who are flying in helicopters, you know, saving people's lives. Like, it's, it's so important, and we need those services. But we do need to pay a little bit more respect to the educational process and teach people these essential skills, um, so that way we can be much better professionals with each other, work better together, and, uh, you know, just maybe enjoy the hard work a little bit more, right?

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, Julian, if people want to connect with you, pick your brain, learn more about your stories, maybe utilize you as a mentor to help them through some of the situations they're going through, how can people connect with you?

Definitely, if you wanted to connect with me, just reach out to me on LinkedIn, and I'll be more than happy to answer back as time allows. And, you know, see if we can build a collaboration.

Amazing. So I'll definitely put the way that everyone can connect with you in the show notes of this episode. And I want to thank you so much, again, for all your years of service. Thank you for your continued passion in diversifying your own career path so you can gain more skills to help others. And, um, I hope I get to see you soon. We're not too far away from each other, so maybe we can meet up one day and have a chat in person. That'd be great.

Yeah. Oh, I'd love that.

So thanks again for coming on the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast, and we'll be in touch soon. Take care.

All right, have a great day.

You too. And that concludes episode 3 of season 4 of the Nursing Strategies for Success podcast with this week's guest, Julian Moreno. We hope that everything that we shared for you in this episode resonates with you and helps you to develop strategies for nursing career success. All the ways to connect to Julian will be in the show notes of this episode. And as always, if you have any questions about anything covered, feel free to visit thenursespeak.com/contact and and get in touch with me. I would love to have a conversation with you. So until next episode, take care, be well, and remember that nurses can do anything.